#trendwatch: Wherein We Predict That Sisqo Will Save Dance Music

Columnist Drew Millard finally cracks under the pressure of a weekly deadline and, in a moment of madness, accurately predicts the future.

At #trendwatch, we (I) strive to remain on top of the latest #trends in #edm, but seeing as it's 1:45p.m. on a Friday and my column was literally due 24 hours ago, I'm throwing that out the window in favor of something more substantive, meaningful, and VERY easily bullshitted: The Future of EDM.

In the past few years, lamestream dance music ("Electronic Dance Music," for the uninitiated), has undergone a series of "hot sounds" that typically last one or two festival seasons before everyone realizes they're stupid and moves onto the next thing. A few years ago, Electric Dancing Music surfed into the American consciousness perched upon the catastrophically massive sine waves of dubstep. It was loud in a stupid way, you could fight to it, and girls didn't hate it. In other words, it was perfect for bros. Dubstep led to Moombahton, which a prominent publicist once described to me in all seriousness as "the next dubstep," which led me to not actually listen to a single Moombahton song ever. After that washed over us, people started listening to Trap. It seemed to make sense at the time, but then Baauer and "Harlem Shake" ruined literally everything. We need a new EDM trend, and we need it fast.

The answer to our prayers is a silver-haired dragon from both the future and 1999. This dragon's name is Sisqo, and in the future, all dance music will be based upon "Thong Song."

Sisqo.

"Thong Song."

Sisqo.

"Thong Song."

Do you understand, dear reader?

Allow me, for a moment, to mansplain linguistics. All words and phrases are signifiers of abstract ideas. Phonetic sounds are inherently empty vessels, their value contingent upon the concepts behind them. Two words can be galaxies apart, phonetically speaking, but be signifiers of the exact same discrete, otherwise inarticulable packets of information.

For example, your brain jumps to the exact same place when you read "Sisqo" as it does when it reads "Thong Song." That is because in 2013, Sisqo is "Thong Song," and "Thong Song" is Sisqo. They are bound in unity for perpetuity, yin and yang, Olivia Benson and Elliot Stabler, Lord Voldemort and Harry Potter.

There is a moment in "Thong Song" so harrowingly perfect that it transcends R&B, transcends pop music, transcends the very fabric of space and time. Following a shaking-broken-glass eye of the storm breakdown ripped straight from the bowels of UK garage, the drums drop out of the mix nearly altogether, replaced by violins so pure they perfectly communicate man's potential to channel the ineffable to reveal the beauty and truth in all around us. Amidst this perfect storm, Sisqo lets out a call of "YEAHHHH." In this moment, time freezes. It is chilling in the most literal sense. Sisqo does not just need to see that thong. If he does not see it, his throat will seize up and he will be silent forevermore. For if he does not see that thong, he will die. All of this information is self-evident, packed into that one cry.

EDM is structured around these moments of transcendent breathtakery, and "Thong Song" made the best one. Therefore, savvy EDM producers will start only replicating "Thong Song," with varying degrees of reverence to their source material.